


and some you do for love, love, love

by redreys



Series: a series of tender events [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (+ they are in a kitchen), (but which kitchen you ask? author has no idea and doesn't care), (its irrelevant either way the most important part is the handholding), (maybe it's in the ship maybe they are camped somewhere in someones house), Eating Together, Other, also they are both sarcastic idiots, i am in awe of both of them and they are in awe of each other, i don't know how to tag this??? there's a lot of tenderness, i feel that about covers it, they hold hands and are in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 20:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21344500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreys/pseuds/redreys
Summary: Peter and Juno eat some cake together.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: a series of tender events [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550137
Comments: 27
Kudos: 112





	and some you do for love, love, love

It’s a slow day. 

Preparations for the next big heist have been made and checked a thousand times. Miraculously, there are no imminent complications to examine and unravel: no problems to resolve, no questions to answer. It’s a cold afternoon, uncharacteristically so, and Juno is allowed to rest.

In all fairness, that does take some getting used to. Juno can’t help but try to do something productive, hovers around Buddy until she snaps and orders him to leave the room. 

Truth is: moments of stillness are hard. It’s relatively easy to check his behavior when Juno has the opportunity to actually act, engage himself in something, anything. Calm is different. 

It can feel freeing or suffocating, depending on the day. 

Initially, Juno had thought that today was likely going to be the latter. 

But— no.

_No_, he thinks, head laying on his hands, hands and arms resting on the kitchen table, eyes stuck into a specific point in space barely a meter away. _No, today is fine_.

_What is so cool about hands, anyway? _he wonders to himself, more amused than puzzled, and concludes that they do have an interesting appeal. Hands are our primary tools: we make art with our hands, we constantly rearrange their assets and force them into preciseness, strength, delicacy. We use them not just to move or function— we employ them deliberately to make choices. You might not be looking at someone’s face and yet still be able to figure out their wants and needs, if only they are careless enough to let them slip through their hands’ movements. 

“Juno?” Nureyev says, and Juno looks up.

“What?” 

“May I ask why you are staring at my hands?” 

Juno laughs under his breath, surprised for having been caught in the act, though not embarrassed. It’s not like he was trying to hide it, anyway. It’s not like he has to.

“They are nice.” 

Nureyev raises an eyebrow. “They are… _nice_?” 

Juno just nods. He doesn’t say anything else, mostly to piss him off. Leaves him hanging there with a compliment in his lap and nothing clever to do with it.

Eventually, Peter sighs and looks back down, coming back to his book and a page he won’t be able to read, not for a couple of minutes at least. Juno sees him fixing his stare so that it looks like he’s reading, even though he isn’t.

He smiles at it. 

Peter is wearing a white blouse, half-sleeve. It suits him, looks worn, comfortable, and yet still somehow fancy. He has almost this ethereal air to him that Juno somehow always ends up overlooking. It doesn’t ring “elegant” to him, everything about Nureyev is just so intrinsically _him _that he has trouble associating it with anything else. Even his masks, all of them, he carefully crafted out of nothing— all are creatures of his own design.

Juno waits for Nureyev to regain his focus and keep on reading, and then he quietly reaches out. Touches the bare skin of his forearm with his fingers, taps along to a tune that doesn’t play.

He can feel goosebumps on Nureyev’s skin and smiles. Takes it as a victory.

“I don’t like you,” Peter says, not even looking up from his book, and Juno laughs.

“That’s a blatant lie.” 

“Don’t underestimate yourself, detective, you are perfectly capable of getting on my nerves.” 

Juno moves his hand across Nureyev’s arm until it gets to his fingers, and with his thumb he starts drawing circles on the skin there. “I don’t doubt that,” he says. 

Nureyev closes his eyes and takes in a measured breath. “I am trying to read,” he says.

“I am trying to hold your hand,” Juno replies, and he could swear Peter’s cheeks just got a little pinker. 

“Must you be so disgustingly cheesy?” 

“Must you be so insistent in pretending not to enjoy it?” 

“Yes,” Peter answers, deadpan, and Juno laughs. 

He lingers on the touch for a few moments, and then he concedes, moves back and gets up from the chair. Peter follows him with his eyes, questioning. Missing the contact, Juno dares to guess.

“Want anything to eat?” Juno asks, and as he opens the fridge with his left hand, the other is already back on Nureyev’s body, lightly squeezing his shoulder. It’s a small room, so it feels only natural to lean on him, the same way one would lean on furniture. If anything, Nureyev has the advantage of being warm. Which is nice. Cold day and all. 

“We had lunch an hour ago.”

Juno shrugs. “A girl’s gotta eat.”

Both of Peter’s eyebrows go up, but his face remains otherwise still. “We had lunch an hour ago, Juno.” 

“Now you just sound like Jet. C’mon, live dangerously.” 

Nureyev looks like he is about to argue on that, perhaps point out that he lives a very dangerous life already, but gives up at the last second. “Why, did you have something in mind?” 

“There’s leftover cake somewhere in the fridge. The one you liked.” 

Peter looks surprised. Juno notices it almost offhandedly. 

There’s this split second of silence that feels loaded with— wonder, maybe. He looks surprised, he actually does, and it takes Juno a second to figure out why. 

It’s not that he did not, in fact, like the cake. it’s not that he doesn’t want it or didn’t think there were leftovers. It’s— it’s the simple fact that Juno knows what he likes. That Juno pays him attention, looks at him with enough care to notice it. 

“Just a small piece, then,” Nureyev says, and Juno doesn’t get even get mad. It doesn’t even hurt too much, to see genuine surprise in the place of habitual joy. He only takes out the cake, because it’s what he can do, and he closes the fridge. 

Juno thinks about using plates, but, thing is, he doesn’t want to wash them after. So he puts two forks on the table along with the cake, and sits down beside Nureyev. 

He half-turns towards Peter, a foot propped up on the chair, right arm resting on his knee, and hands him the fork. 

“What?” he asks, when Peter doesn’t immediately respond to the gesture.

“You know what, Juno? I am afraid some habits are beyond saving,” Peter says, after a moment, and takes the fork. 

“Don’t be dramatic, it’s not like we are eating it with our hands while laying in the dirt. Which, just so you know, would be fun.” 

“It would not.” 

“It definitely would.” 

Peter sighs, and finally starts eating the damn thing. Begins from the top, from the chocolate drops and the flower-shaped sweets.

“I was only thinking that it would have been polite to leave some of it in the fridge,” he says after swallowing. 

“Really, Nureyev? What kind of a thief are you?” 

“One who doesn’t steal from fellow criminals”

Juno so much as opens his mouth.

“Don’t.” 

“I didn’t say anything.” 

“You were going to.” 

He waits a few moments. Lets Nureyev think he won’t say it, that he will be considerate enough to spare him at least that one line. And then—

“If that’s so, how come you stole my heart?” 

Peter blinks once. Twice. “I will not dignify that with an answer.” 

Juno only smiles wider and keeps staring at him. He really doesn’t have anything interesting to say. He is just content with having him there.

“Though, I must say,” Peter adds, last second, before turning his gaze down and calmly resuming eating, “I think it probably has something to do with my looks.” 

Juno smacks him on the shoulder.

“You did ask,” Nureyev says, nonchalantly, and, god, Juno wishes he could draw or paint or, hell, write poems. He wishes there was a way to capture Peter’s jaw and eyes and genuine smile. 

Not necessarily to frame it in time, not even to show it to the world. It just seems a waste— all this space, all these cities and people, and the universe allows no more than one Peter Nureyev. 

He gives up eating the cake at all, then, and scoots closer. Tentatively, shy despite all appearances, he rests his head on Peter’s shoulder and finds his hand underneath the table.

Closes his eyes when he feels Peter squeezing back, holding tighter. Turning his head to kiss Juno’s hair. 

“I blame you entirely, I hope you know that,” Peter whispers, and Juno can’t tell what makes him feel safer. The warmth that spreads throughout his body every time Peter touches him, or the sound of his voice. He doesn’t mean to be cheesy, it’s just— it’s such an overwhelming feeling that it would be embarrassing to leave it unnoticed. 

“Blame me for what?” Juno asks, lazily, his words half-lost in Peter’s neck, and decides that it’s probably both, equally. 

“Loving you,” Peter says, simply. 

It takes a few moments for Juno to makes sense of the words. He raises his head, opens his eyes.

“What exactly does—“

Nureyev all but laughs, takes his face into his hands. 

“May I?” he asks, like a knight would ask a princess, and Juno melts into it. He nods.

Nureyev kisses his cheek first, smiling into his skin when Juno shivers under him. Then the edge of his mouth, once. And then, finally, he kisses where Juno can kiss back.

Unsurprisingly, he tastes of chocolate. 

“What I meant,” Peter says into his ear, when they part, “is that we wouldn’t be in this situation if you weren’t so.”

“If I weren’t what?” Juno asks, after a bit of silence, so quietly he can barely hear himself. 

Peter shrugs. “You,” he says, simply. “If loving you hadn’t proved so inevitable, I am not sure I would have had the opportunity to realize that I do, in fact, quite like to be happy.” 

A past version of Juno would have said nothing. Maybe a kiss would have sufficed. 

But, current Juno— current Juno moves back just enough to properly look at him. 

“You love me because you have no other choice?” he asks, genuinely curious. 

Nureyev smiles. “I have a million other available choices, Juno, at all times.”

“Then why—“ 

“I love you on purpose, because loving you is the best one. And, ultimately, that’s not because of the _love _part of the sentence, nor the _I_.” 

“I am not embarrassed,” Juno says, in a rush, when he sees Peter’s eyes gaze curiously at his expression, and Nureyev laughs. Shit, does he have a good laugh.

“Thank you for the clarification, dear.” 

“Shut up.” 

Peter raises his arms in defeat, and, then, as if no words had been exchanged, he picks up the fork and starts eating the rest of the cake.

Juno leaves him to it. Lies his head down on the table, eyes closed, and breathes. 

After a while, Nureyev puts a hand in his hair and starts caressing the curls. 

**Author's Note:**

> if I ever feel like indulging myself I'll probably turn this into a series of tender events and write some other scenes. I just really love these two.
> 
> title's from Love Love Love, by The Mountain Goats 
> 
> anyway thanks for reading and let's hope that the canon treats us well. I honestly am quite positive it will. have a good day 🌻
> 
> (ps: I am red-reys on tumblr, if you ever feel like screaming about this story and like me you have no one to do it with)


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